News // 41 News by Beverley Luckings
29 ARTS IN PROGRESS Gallery in Milan is delighted to announce that it has extended the duration of the ongoing exhibition GIAN PAOLO BARBIERI: UNCONVENTIONAL through 22 April, 2023.
The artist experiments, invents and then deconstructs in order to then recompose to his liking that which surrounds him. The exhibition presents the public a highly innovative selection of images, both in terms of their setting and styling, the fruit of the unmistakable genius of the artist, who was the winner of the 2018 Lucie Award for Best International Photographer (Outstanding Achievement in Fashion). It is a style of photography that is at the same time ironic and sophisticated, both rare and provocative, rich with references to art history, marked by eclectic outdoor sets in exotic locations and allusions to cinema that echo Barbieri’s experiences as a young man studying at Cinecittà in Rome.
The exhibition presents intimate, spontaneous photographs of models and celebrities such as Eva Herzigova, Isa Stoppi and Donatella Versace juxtaposed with iconic photographs that Barbieri – one of the most brilliant interpreters of Made in Italy – created for some of the most famous ad campaigns for Italian and international fashion brands including Versace, Ferrè, Vivienne Westwood, Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino, and Armani.
Internationally recognized for his trademark black and white photographs, his subjects appear almost unapproachable in their sharp sophistication. Using color, Barbieri recounts his own personal and ironic interpretation of fashion and feminine beauty: The women in the photographs on display free themselves from the more canonical poses of fashion photography, instead becoming for the occasion spokeswomen of a new kind of unconventional elegance which reveals a more nonchalant, sensual perspective.
The works on display, a blend of unseen portraits and hand-painted photographs, tell the story of the artist’s irreverence and creativity, a photographer for whom the arts have always represented an inescapable means of validation and support to fashion, well beyond their utility. His studies and research have been so far-reaching that, in a career spanning over 60 years and comprising more than one million photographs, it would be difficult to find even a single example without allusions to points of reference or inspiration from the visual arts, cinema and the great masters of art and photography.
“I have always loved art, in all its incarnations. Since I was a child, the inspiration of theatre and cinema has played an important role. Reading widely, studying classical art, looking up to the great masters of the past, or simply by looking around me at what animates my surroundings, I have cultivated my artistic eye. I imagined or drew in my head that which I would have liked to be the result of this act, constructing my sets meticulously, always citing, more or less explicitly, art, cinema or architecture.” Gian Paolo Barbieri.
The works in the exhibition surprise a public who already know and love Barbieri, showing a lesser-known but irresistibly fascinating dimension of one of the greatest masters of photography, whose trademark style remains, even today, among the most copied and admired in the world.
The exhibition opened just a few days following the cinema release of the first film documentary made about the life and work of Gian Paolo Barbieri, ‘The Man and The Beauty’, which won the Audience Award at the Biografilm Festival 2022 in Bologna. The film premiered in Italian movie theaters at the end of the year.
Cited as one of the fourteen best fashion photographers by Stern magazine, Barbieri is an artist who is continuously becoming more present in prestigious museum collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in London, Palazzo Reale in Milan, the Kunstforum in Vienna, the MAMM in Moscow and the Erarta Contemporary Art Museum in St. Petersburg, the Musée du quai Branly in Paris and the Nicola Erni Collection, Switzerland.
06.02.2023
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The Musec museum in Lugano, Switzerland, has announced this year’s four winners of Unpublished Photo ‘22, the annual global open call for young photographers aged 36 and under, as well as information on the exhibition at Musec taking place from 20 October, 2022, through 16 April, 2023, in cooperation with the Fondazione culture e musei and Milan gallery 29 Arts in Progress.
The global open call has been held now for five years, and the four winners this year dealt with topics such as the deterioration of the environment, the search for self identity, overcoming limitations and the importance of traditions and crafts.
Thanks to a partnership with the De Pietri Artphilein Foundation, the UP22 Award competition has given the first prizewinner a cash prize of 2,000 Swiss francs in addition to exhibiting the works and featuring them in a dedicated catalogue for the exhibition. The second prizewinner received 1,500 Swiss francs, while the third and fourth runners-up each received 1,000 Swiss francs.
The first prize went to Vietnamese photographer Quan Nguyen Ho for ‘Life Garbage’, the second to Indian photographer Dipak Ray for ‘Frame within Frame’. Third and fourth place were awarded respectively to Malagasy photographer Tolojanahary Ranaivosoa for ‘The Yellow Revolution’ and Russian photographer Olga Dmitrienko for ‘Genoese Craftsmen and Artists’.
A special prize awarded by Artphilein Editions from Lugano, consisting of the publication of a prestigious monograph of the works, went to Tolojanahary Ranaivosoa.
Unpublished Photo ‘22 – On show from 20 October, 2022, through 16 April, 2023 . Musec is open daily from 11am – 6pm except on Tuesdays . GoSee : musec.ch/en/il-museo/Informazioni
09.11.2022
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29 ARTS IN PROGRESS is presenting ‘DIPTYCH’ until 19 November, 2022 – an exhibition by Italian photographer Toni Meneguzzo, for which the gallerists and the curator Giovanni Pelloso have selected over sixty works made using Polaroid large format (20 x 25 cm), many of which have never been shown before. The Polaroids are the trademark of the artist’s work, showcasing his contribution to fashion photography.
In his new works, the artist seeks to involve us in his experiments: through the use of acetate and transfer onto paper for the Polaroids, to the use of mirrors, thread and pigments – which upon interacting with the randomness of light and wind, give shape to immensely poetic abstract compositions.
The gallery on his work : “The artist pushes towards a truly contemporary language suggestive of an unpublished relationship between the Polaroid and the vividness of his most recent digital photographs, which combine a rigorous formal technique with an uninhibited use of the medium.”
“Tony Meneguzzo has always taken ‘a deeply personal approach to photography, combining a rigorous technique with an uninhibited use of the medium,’” Ivo Bonacorsi writes in his text for the exhibition. “The images, as if they were details from a painting, have been matched, layered and cut to produce a new, looser, non-definitive narrative, like a final layer of varnish applied to emphasize the absence of a subject as much as its presence in the landscape.”
GoSee : 29 ARTS IN PROGRESS
28.09.2022
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